After a week’s absence, Jacques appeared at supper, dishevelled and debonair, with rather a wicked gleam in his narrow eyes. The atmosphere during the meal was tense with suppressed emotion, and it was evident that Monsieur Troqueville was thirsting for his blood.
Supper over, Madeleine made a sign to Jacques to follow her.
‘Well?’ she asked him, once they were in her own room.
‘Well?’ he answered, smiling enigmatically.
‘You have been about some mischief—I know it well. Recount me the whole business without delay.’
‘Some mischief? ’Tis merely that I have been driving the playwright’s trade and writing a little comedy, on life instead of on foolscap.’
‘I do not take your meaning.’
‘No? Have you ever remarked that Symmetry is the prettiest attribute of the Comic Muse? Here is my cast—two Belles and one Gallant. Belle I. loathes the Gallant like the seven deadly sins, while he most piteously burns with her flame, and has been hoodwinked by his own vanity and the persuasions of a friend that she burns as piteously with his. Now, mark the inverted symmetry—the Gallant loathes Belle II., while she burns with his flame and is persuaded that he does with hers. Why, the three are as prettily interrelated as a group of porcelain figures! I am of opinion that Comedy is naught but Life viewed geometrically.’
‘You talk in riddles, Jacques, and I am entirely without clue to your meaning—save that it is some foolishness,’ cried Madeleine with intense irritation. Jacques’s only answer was an inscrutable smile.
‘Read me your riddle without delay, or you’ll have me stark mad with your nonsense!’ she cried with tears of suspense and impatience in her eyes.